For once, I didn't have a linux machine to help me. That caused some trouble, but I was able to get windows utilities to perform the same tasks as dd.
I decided to use the eee community edition of debian. It is available at http://eeepc.debian.net/debian/images/debian-eeepc.img. Used HP usb disk storage tool to format a pendrive and flashnul to write the image to the device.
Struggled a while with booting the 3e from a usb device. I figured out that you should enter bios (f2 during boot), and enable removable device as primary boot medium, and turn off silent boot and quick boot. It might also be a good ide to set the bios in "install os" mode.
Save, reboot. Then hit ESC while booting to get a boot menu, and select USB.
The installer was able to detect both ethernet and wireless NICs. I was able to retrieve the base system as a charm. Promising. I got some hints out of http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEeePC/HowTo/Install
Then boot. Remember to revert the bios settings - at least set os install mode to "installed".
After boot, I installed those xorg packages suggested by the debianeee howto, and then fluxbox with dependencies. And behold, Xorg started without a glitch. Amazing. Nothing like those old days of xorg.conf hacking, hsync, vsync yadda yadda.
apt-get install bliss
